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What ‘Bobby’ Didn’t Tell You - 1

Oregon Institute on Development and Disability

Oregon Health & Science University [OHSU]


Being “Bobby Approved” does not necessarily mean that the site is “User Approved.”  Striving to go Beyond Bobby addresses the needs of the user, not just what’s “Legal”.  Some of the items that we encountered in our quest to design a premier Accessible web site are listed below:


  1. Build an accessible Website as part of the development process.  Afterthoughts involve additional programming costs and time.

  2. Use Web testers during and after development to complement electronic validators.

  3. When testing for accessibility, review pages with more than one browser and using more than one operating system.  Consider outlining technical recommendations.  For example, “Best viewed using Firefox 11 and higher.”

  4. Organization of content into meaningful categories is paramount.  e.g. long lists are more useful if broken down into shorter ones in outline format.

  5. Hidden links, e.g.  “Skip to Content,” are very useful and much appreciated so that a screen reader skips recurring “global links” at the top of every page and drives right down to the content.

  6. To create hidden links, simply match the text color to the background color so that the link is invisible to the eye, but still there for screen readers.  Also, make sure to place the link on the top left of the page, as screen readers move from top left to right.

  7. Appropriate use of headers makes it very intuitive to a screen reader.  Users are able to quickly tab to a header section to locate items of interest.

  8. Intuitive and Descriptive naming of headers – Many people like to scroll through a list of headers with their screen readers to browse the content, so naming headers as descriptively as possible will help direct users to the content they are seeking.  For example, placing a header titled “Location” over a field where you want people to enter location information is not as effective as a header that says “Enter Location.”

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Bobby was a comprehensive web accessibility tool designed to increase the accessibility of a website.  Bobby tested webpages using guidelines established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Access Initiative (WAI), and Section 508 guidelines from the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (Access Board).

The original Bobby was a free online tool which launched in 1995 and became well known for the use of the Bobby Approved icon that website authors could use to indicate they successfully passed the Bobby online test.

The slightly-dated article to the right was prepared by the Oregon Institute on Development and Disability at Oregon Health & Science University [OHSU] in 2002 and provides additional insights.

Currently, WAVE provides a Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool at wave.webaim.org free of charge and in several browser-compatible versions.

Accessible website considerations

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